It’s getting very near that time of year when we all start thinking about Christmas decorations…..it won’t be long before some of you start putting your trees up, but it can take some planning. Regular readers will remember that I promised to bring you some Christmas style tips after my trip to Notcutts Christmas store in Bluewater. I loved the suggestions that they made and asked them if they would mind me blogging about them. I will be adding my own tips too and attempting to show you what I have achieved.

Firstly I thought you might like to see a few of the decorations I chose on that trip, remember I’m quite picky about what goes on my Christmas tree and the overall ‘image’. So, I fell in love with these glass decorations and the white owl which are all in keeping with the decorations I already have :

• For an elegant look I’ve always stuck to either one main colour, gold, or more recently two main colours, lilac and pale blue shades with white or silver added in.
• You can never have enough lights in my opinion, the more the better. I think I put something like 400 lights on our tree. Everyone knows that they put the lights on first don’t they? I push my lights as far into the tree as possible to hide the ugly wires.
• In the video below you will see that it is suggested that we put the larger baubles at the lower part of the tree working our way up with smaller ones. I must admit I haven’t done that before but it is something I will try this year and I think I can trust Little M not to touch the more delicate decorations. [the children, after all, get their own tree to do what they will! ;)]
• I will also be drying out oranges myself, again as mentioned in the video, rather than buying extortionately priced ready made ones to hang on the tree along with cinnamon sticks. That is true Christmas smells to me, I cannot get enough of them and at Christmas our house is scented with them. I even top up my year round vases of cones with orange oil to prolong the scent.
• If you use an artificial tree don’t forget to ‘fluff’ it out. It’s worth the few minutes it takes.
• I personally never use tinsel. I think that the decorations alone are more than enough but it’s all about preferences.

Anyway, I have been lucky enough to receive, today, this fabulous video with style tips by Pippa Jameson. It is only just over four minutes long but well worth a watch.

Next time I will be writing about table decorations and more so if you don’t want to miss it press the subscribe button, please.

And…….when I have my tree I will of course post pictures. We tend to put our tree up quite late though, I’m a bit disorganised like that!